Arizona State's swoon, UCLA's revenge, Duck downer

Jeff Pendergraph's last-minute dunk would have tied the game between ASU and USC, but officials instead whistled him for a foul. AP

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LOS ANGELES -- If we can assume the Pac-10 is the best conference in college basketball this season, then we can also assume the league will send at least five teams to the NCAA tournament next week.

The aforementioned assumptions should allow Arizona State men's basketball coach Herb Sendek to sleep well tonight. After all, his Sun Devils are the fifth-place team in the Pac-10, with a 9-9 conference mark (19-11 overall).

But Sendek and his Sun Devils have been tossing and turning on a bubble that may have burst with their 59-55 loss to USC in the second round of the Pac-10 tournament here Thursday.

"I still don't know what position we're in for sure," said Sendek. "I don't study it. If I studied it, I'd go crazy; but I know how good this league is, and I know how hard any one win is to get."

The potential snub wouldn't be so hard to swallow if Oregon and Arizona, the sixth- and seventh-place teams in the Pac-10, weren't considered stronger tournament candidates in the eyes of several "bracketologists."

It isn't difficult to see the bracketologists' logic, though. Arizona State has lost 10 of its last 15, ranks 74th in the RPI and has a strength of schedule ranking of 78. In the numbers-heavy boardroom that decides the field of 65, that's likely to spell doom for the Sun Devils when matched up against Arizona (34th in the RPI; No. 2 schedule nationally) or Oregon (54th in the RPI; No. 34 schedule overall).

"People talk about our nonconference schedule, but we scheduled three games in the Maui Invitational that were expected to be difficult," said Sendek. "We played Xavier, we played a Big 12 challenge. That's the only thing I hear about us, but we did the best we could."

Acronyms such as RPI and SOS, however, mean very little to Arizona State forward Jeff Pendegraph as he stands outside his locker room, biting his lip when asked about the final controversial call that may have ended his hopes of advancing to his first NCAA tournament.

Pendegraph was called for an offensive foul after tying the game with a slam dunk over Davon Jefferson with 16.9 seconds remaining. While replays showed Pendegraph hardly touched Jefferson on the play, the dunk was nullified and Jefferson made both free throws to put the game away. It was yet another black eye for Pac-10 officials, whose blown calls in several key games have made national headlines recently.

"I didn't feel any contact, nobody trying to box me out, I just jumped over everybody and dunked it," said Pendegraph. "I didn't see anybody near me. I just put the ball in the rim. Whatever. Everyone has their own perspective on the game, but we shouldn't have even been in that position."

The controversial ending, combined with Arizona State's 80-66 win against USC two weeks ago, caused Trojans coach Tim Floyd to breathe a sigh of relief and open his postgame press conference by reeling off reasons why Arizona State is a tournament team before talking about his own team.

"Arizona State should be in the NCAA tournament," Floyd said. "They have a lot of great wins. Over Arizona twice, Stanford, Xavier by 22, they beat us. We were very fortunate to get out of there. I don't believe there was a tournament decision based on that last call. I think they're in the NCAA tournament anyway."

Outside of those dreaded acronyms that are weighing down the Sun Devils, they have accumulated a decent résumé heading into Selection Sunday. They have as many top 25 (2) and top 50 wins (5) as Arizona and Stanford. Plus, Arizona State's 77-55 win over No. 10 Xavier is the league's biggest win against a nonconference opponent -- in terms of ranking and margin of victory.

Perhaps more important, the Sun Devils swept Arizona and drew with Oregon but finished higher in the conference and posted a better record against the league's top four teams (2-6, 1-7). Yet, here they stand, with the possibility of being left out of the tournament, despite finishing in the top half of the toughest conference in the country.

"I've never been to the tournament, so I don't know what it takes to get there," said Jefferson. "I know what it takes not to get there, but you have to win games and we've played tough people. We beat Stanford, Arizona twice, Xavier, USC, Oregon ... c'mon. All that other stuff is for people to talk about and debate on, but we won some big games. I can't worry about it now. We'll find out Sunday. I'll organize something at Chuck E. Cheese and we'll watch [the selection show] there."

No miracle finish necessary for Bruins

Both teams spent much of the past five days watching "The Shot" replayed over and over again. Cal, angered that Josh Shipp's over the backboard game-winning shot counted; UCLA, equally annoyed they were being accused of cheating to win for the second time in three days.

Never before had NCAA Rule 7, Section 1, Article 3 -- "The ball shall be out of bounds when it passes over the backboard from any direction" -- received so much publicity.

If Cal came into its second round Pac-10 tournament game motivated by its near-upset at Pauley Pavilion, but UCLA was just as inspired to put the ninth-place Bears in their place.

The result was an 88-66 win for UCLA that was actually not as close as the final score would indicate. The Bruins emptied their bench when up by 32 in the second half.

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